Lamb of God
by KiramidHead
Summary: In a radical retelling of Silent Hill Homecoming, war veteran Alex Shepherd returns to his hometown of Shepherd's Glen, only to find it in a state of decay and most of the residents missing. Alex sets out to uncover the truth of what's going on, all the while dealing with his own personal issues.


Prologue

There was a haze in the air as the convoy approached the small Afghan village. It was a lonely place, situated at the foot of a mountain range that was about a million miles from nowhere. As the convoy came to a stop the only sign of life was a lone man with a crude shovel, beating down a lone patch of disturbed earth. He looked up and watched as the soldiers began to file out of their Humvees.

PFC Alex Shepherd was the last to exit the vehicles into the hot afternoon sun. From a distance, he looked no different from his fellow soldiers, who were dressed in the same fatigues and carried the same weapons as he did. As he looked about the village, Alex locked eyes with the man with the shovel, and lost track of everything else. Something did not fell quite right. This place did not feel like the other villages his squad had visited in his time in Afghanistan. Looking in the eyes of this man in this village at the end of the world, Alex Shepherd was struck by a sensation he couldn't quite place.

"Shepherd! Get a move on!"

Alex snapped out of his reverie. "Sir, yes sir!"

Alex fell in line with the rest of the squad as they followed Sergeant Apone into the village. They approached the nearest dwelling, and the sergeant knocked on the door. A swarthy, turban wearing man stepped out, and listened as Apone questioned him. Alex had not yet gotten the hang of the local dialect, but he knew enough of the words to know that the sergeant was asking for directions to the home of the village elder.

Their orders were to make a tour of the known population centers in the district, and question the communities' leaders about the location of possible terrorist holdouts. So far, the mission had been fruitless, and the locals were either uncooperative or just plain didn't have the information they were looking for. This village was as far as their maps went in the region, and was the squad's last chance to produce results.

As the Sergeant continued haggling with the man, Alex noticed that he was holding a knife in his left hand. The blade was covered with blood, fresh and dripping to the floor. Alex craned his head and looked into the man's house. He saw the body of a freshly slaughtered animal, a lamb cut into pieces, its blood gathered into a bowl. Once again, Alex slipped into deep thought. It did not seem like the work of a butcher to him. It was too… ceremonial. Perhaps it was part of some ancient religion, a religion that had survived the rise of Islam in this remote place. The same sensation he had felt looking at the shovel man had returned. He felt a sense of… familiarity.

The man muttered one final word to the sergeant and slammed his door, breaking Alex's chain of thought. Sergeant Apone, armed with his new directions, led the soldiers on. As they moved further into the village, Alex noticed that most of the villagers were still nowhere to be seen. In any other village, their curiosity would have been roused by the convoy, and they would have crept out to investigate. This only reinforced his strange feeling, like he somehow knew this place intimately. He just couldn't figure it out.

They stopped outside the house that the turbaned man had marked as the belonging to the village elder. It looked unlike anything Alex, or anyone in the squad, for that matter, had seen before. The dwelling was decorated from top to bottom with some sort of ceremonial rope. Once again, a man answered the Sergeant's knock. He was a bent, aged man with more wrinkles on his face than clothes before they were ironed. The two of them exchanged a few words, and then the sergeant turned and gave out orders to all the men. Some would come in with him, others would guard the vehicles.

"Shepherd, Spunkmeyer, stand watch here while I haggle with this geezer."

As the rest of the squad went about their business, Alex leaned against the wall of the elder's house. He kept watch, and made sure Spunkmeyer did so as well. The minutes ticked by. When the sergeant had been inside for nearly half an hour, Alex saw someone approaching him. It was a young boy, presumably a native of the village. He held out a cup of water, seemingly as a sign of good will. Suddenly feeling thirsty, Alex reached down to accept the boy's offer. As he did so, he noticed something strange. The boy seemed to be soaked to the skin. It brought back painful memories…

_KA-BOOM!_

_KA-BOOM!_

_KA-BOOM!_

The Humvees were destroyed in a series of deafening explosions. Machine gun fire burst out, demolishing Spunkmeyer's face and perforating his body with dozens of bloody, ragged holes. The shots narrowly missed Alex. He grabbed the boy's hand and started to run.

"Incoming!"

Alex shouted, even though he could barely hear after the multiple explosions. He as fast as he could, never letting go of his iron grip on the boy. More gunfire and explosions, presumably caused by RPGs, rocked the village. Alex ducked behind one of the buildings, trying to take cover from the chaos. And then a terrible thing happened. He felt the boy's arm go slack in his hand. He pulled the child closer to see if he had been hit badly, and he saw. There were no wounds at all on the body, but he barely noticed. Alex was not holding the body of a young Afghan boy. The corpse in his arms, wearing typical American clothes that were soaked completely through, was that of his brother Joshua. Alex now knew why this place was familiar. It felt like home.

Alex screamed.

"No!

"Josh!

"JOSH!

"Josh…"

Alex mumbled as he woke up in the passenger seat of a commercial truck. The man in the driver's seat looked over at him.

"Bad dream?"

Alex turned and gazed blankly at the bearded man who sat next to him. It took him a few moments to remember where he was. Then it came to him. He had hitched a ride in this truck after he was discharged from the military hospital outside Augusta. They had gotten along well enough in the remaining time.

"Bad memories."

The driver shrugged.

"Dreams, memories, in my experience they tend to bleed together."

Alex nodded. He then turned to look out the window. Trees, fog, empty road, and more fog were all that he could see. He was definitely close to home now.

"You know," the trucker said, "if I had a lick of sense I would have dumped your ass back in Augusta as soon as I knew where you were headed."

"Huh," said Alex, taken by surprise.

The trucker continued.

"A long time ago, before you were even born, if I have your age pegged correctly, I used to take short cuts through the Toluca Lake area all the time. I would even stop for coffee in Brahms if I had the time. Well, I was passing through when I had this… I don't rightly know what to call it. Something weird happened in this town called Silent Hill, a kitschy tourist place on the lake. Even after all these years, I can't properly describe it. It was just… strange."

Alex knew better than to doubt the man's story. He'd been hearing rumors about Silent Hill all his life. He'd never gone there himself, but the place had a reputation for being, like the man said, strange. A fair number of people had disappeared into thin air in Silent Hill. Most were never heard from again. That and the rumors of some sort of cult, well, they made the place seem sinister.

"The why did you pick me up?"

"I don't know. It just felt right, I guess. I also wouldn't feel too good leaving you there, you being a vet and all. I had some friends who fought in 'Nam, and I'd never leave them by the side of the road. But something was different about you. It seemed like you needed to be here more than most. That's the best way I can put it."

Alex nodded and turned to the window, thinking. His thoughts drifted to the war. Four years ago, he left home and enlisted. Six months ago, he'd been wounded in an ambush in a remote Afghan village. He had just managed to get to safety, with a mean dose of shrapnel in his side and a wounded comrade propped up on his shoulder. He had hid out in the wilderness, and tended their wounds as best he could. His companion, missing part of his leg and most of his right arm, had died of blood loss two days later. Alex had gotten lucky, and a friendly chopper had found him not long after.

"Almost there, soldier."

Alex looked, and saw the sign:

WELCOME TO

SHEPHERD'S GLEN

Alex Shepherd was home.


End file.
